Google Pittsburgh Office Levels Up to Bakery Square 2.0

Search giant makes room for new employees in the East End.

BY JOHN LAVANGA and GIDEON BRADSHAW

February 4, 2014

Google Pittsburgh office photo courtesy of Strada

Enter: the Googleplex. Something’s been cooking on the Bakery Square 2.0 development site in East Liberty, and today Google confirmed what many had hoped was coming: The search giant will expand its Pittsburgh office to a second building on the other side of Penn Avenue. Google has signed a lease for 66,000 square feet of office space “to accommodate for natural growth in our Pittsburgh office,” a spokesperson for the company said in an email. That means room for up to hundreds of new jobs.

Bakery Square 2.0 currently is under construction in the area next to Mellon Park and is scheduled to open in June. When completed, Google's two offices will be connected by a sky bridge over Penn Avenue.

This is the second big announcement to come within the last few weeks on the relationship between the city of Pittsburgh and Google, which already occupies office space on four floors in Bakery Square. Mayor Bill Peduto told us last week he had informally spoken with Google about making Fiber, the company’s high-speed Internet and TV/DVR service, available in the city.

Inside the Google office

Props: Politico publishes history of Pittsburgh’s robo-revolution

We’ve spent a lot of time in recent weeks talking about all the accolades Pittsburgh’s been getting from professional list-makers across the Web. From Buzzfeed to the Huffington Post to Gawker — people are jumping on the ’Burgh bandwagon. But how many can tell the difference between Oliver Onion and Chester Cheeser come the Great Pierogie Race?

This morning, when Politico published this in-depth article on how robotics saved Pittsburgh, it was as refreshing as a sunny day in the middle of February. The article, written by Politico senior writer Glenn Thrush, is a longform dive into the history of Carnegie Mellon’s now-thriving robotics industry — as well as the uniquely Pittsburgh elements that allowed it to flourish — full of choice passages like this one:

“The old image of Pittsburgh used to be anchored in the immovable soot-stained brick and iron of the smokestack; increasingly, it’s being defined by the mobility of robots and the protean flexibility of the people who build them.”

Thrush, it seems, is optimistic about the Steel City’s (or perhaps Robo-City’s) future, and he makes a strong case, highlighting all the major innovations Pittsburghers have been aware of for years — from Robotics to Duolingo to UPMC’s innovative medical breakthroughs — and the creative culture that we’re creating here.

It’ll take longer to read than a list, but it’s well worth it.

#Theft: Here’s Marc-Andre Fleury with the save of the year

Marc-Andre Fleury may have gotten robbed of a spot in the upcoming Winter Games, but it doesn’t look like he’s letting it get to him. In fact, he did a little robbing of his own last night, making the save of the year on a shot by Ottawa’s offensive wunderkind Erik Karlsson.